NFL '07 - Staggering to the Finish

Last week was dreadful.

That's all I have to say at this moment.

Tonight the Patriots will cover 14 points as they make mincemeat of the Giants. Never mind Brady and Moss - it's the New England secondary that will shut down the New York passing game.

Only Eli Manning won't figure that out until they've scored twice on interceptions.

Sunday morning...

I was dead wrong about the score and mostly wrong about Manning and the New England secondary - until Hobbs picked off the lad in the fourth quarter, which led to the Death Blow.

That was the best pro game I've seen in a while. And how about that unprecedented act of generosity on the part of the NFL, allowing those of us without the NFL Network to see the game?

(Call your cable company...call your cable company... )

Right. Here are the scenarios for games that mean something:

Car -3 at TB: Bucs began resting players last week vs. San Francisco.

NO -2 at Chi: Saints blew it last week but have a teensy-weensy chance of sliding into the playoffs, so they must win.

SF +10 at Cle: Browns are in with a Tennessee loss. Win or lose here doesn't matter, and Niners have been stubborn lately.

Was -9 vs. Dal: Figure Cowboys resting people and win-and-in for Redskins and this is an easy pick.

Min +3 at Den: Vikes have very slim hope for playoffs.

SD - 8.5 at Oak: With win Chargers avoid Patriots until final round of playoffs, assuming they get that far.

Pit - 3.5 at Bal: Steelers could get that #3 spot if the Chargers lose.

Ind +6 vs. Ten: Win-and-in for Titans, Indy's all set...but I still have a problem passing up the Colts as home underdogs.

The rest:

GB +4 vs. Det: Nothing on the line, but again, hard to pass up a good team at home plus points.

KC +6.5 at NYJ: Loser gets a better draft pick, and needs it.

Phi -8 vs. Buf

Mia + 2.5 vs. Cin

Jax - 6.5 at Hou: Jags are in at #5, but I'm thinking they'll play this like a tuneup, not a gimme...

Atl -1 vs. Sea: ...as opposed to this one, where the Seahawks are going to relax.

AZ -6 vs. StL: From the "somebody has to win this" file; Cards would finish with .500 record.

NFL '07 - Week 16

(Sunday morning update)

Hmm - already down 0-2 for the week. Talk about stumbling to the finish line...

Which is exactly what's going to happen to the Giants today in Buffalo. They are going to gag, and get shoved around by New England next week, and have to back into the playoffs. Buf + 2.5 vs. NYG.

NYJ + 8.5 at Ten: Jets hang in these games, you have to give them that.

Cle -2.5 at Cin

GB -8.5 at Chi

Ind -7 vs. Hou

Det -4.5 vs. KC

Mia +22 at NE

Oak +13 at Jax

NO -3 vs. Phi

Min - 6.5 vs. Was

AZ -10 vs. Atl

Bal +11 at Sea

TB - 5.5 at SF

SD - 8.5 vs. Den

An Abrupt Shift

The other day I posted a diatribe in which I made some extremely rude remarks about people I know well. The remarks were based on my complete misinterpretation of a situation. Had I simply walked down the hall and asked a couple of questions the entire thing could have been cleared up in five minutes.

So I offer this apology, in this space.

NFL '07 - Week 16

By golly. It seems as if it was only yesterday when the pro football season started. The Jets were still in the league, and everything was possible.

Now Michael Vick's in the can, Everybody Hates Belichek and the Steelers can't buy a win.

Which leads me to tonight's contest, thankfully restricted to the 187 homes that receive the NFL Network. Nothing much to choose from here, as St. Louis is a 7.5 point home 'dog against Pittsburgh. The Steelers' offensive production has been so uneven that I am hesitant to lay this amount - so I won't. Rams plus seven and a half.

Saturday Dallas is another road favorite, giving 10.5 at Carolina. The Panthers are 2-5 against the spread (according to the excellent gambling section of USA Today); however, the Panthers will still be clawing for a barely possible playoff spot.

But Dallas has even greater incentives - to ensure home field for the playoffs, and to ease Jessica Simpson's mind about poor Tony. So I'll take Dallas and lay the points.

8-8 last week; season 97-104-6

Rooting for Dirty Laundry

The Mitchell report, released last week, told us pretty much what we'd suspected all along - that a lot of players used steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in the last 15 years or so, the owners knew about it, and nobody did much of anything until Barry Bonds became a made-to-order fall guy.

But for me it's the last straw.

Rooting for the laundry, as Jerry Seinfeld said? Sure, that's what I've been doing, with less and less real interest each year.

After all, when a fan needs a working knowledge of contract law to follow the migrations of talent, it's fair to state that the Baseball Experience has lost some of its innocence. Am I rooting for laundry or an agent?

I certainly don't feel much kinship with fellow fans. It's more like the camaraderie inspired by being part of the same massive class-action lawsuit.

I am part of a tribe that used to root for the New York Mets, and now pulls for a corporation to make good personnel moves and hefty profits. "Hey, didja see the quarterly report?!" has replaced the excitement when a homegrown prospect makes the jump from AA to the bigs.

Following major league baseball is a lifelong habit, and it's dying hard. I won't even try to break it off cleanly; I'll listen on the radio during the summer and check the box scores.

But the Mitchell report makes it clear to me that the people who get rich off this game have nothing but contempt for the suckers who make it all possible.

Why this has taken so long is a tribute to my own nostalgic delusions and willingness to absorb endless indignities on the way to a World Series.

But no more. I will not expend one smidgen of emotion on my favorite gang of sullen multi-millionaires.

Unless, of course, the Mets get hot in September.

The Cinema - Night of Bloody Horror, or The Film Major Dad Hopes You'll Never Rent

Night of Bloody Horror (1969) is a relentlessly rotten flick that proves once again that the most dangerous thing a young woman with a beehive hairdo can say to a supposed homicidal maniac is "Boy, you're touchy."

Gerald McRaney, an actual real actor who makes a living, and who starred in the relentlessly rotten TV series "Major Dad," plays Wesley, a skinny dork with a bad temper, a history of mental instability and no pugilistic skills.

Wes lives with his weird mother and farts around in the back yard when he isn't having psychedelic migraines and getting his caboose kicked in saloons.

When his lady friends keep turning up in bloody chunks suspicion naturally falls on Wes. It's not fair, but since Vietnam, what is?

The "action" takes the viewer from a dimly-lit bar to a dimly-lit police station, to dimly-lit house and dimly-lit apartment, with a detour to a dimly-lit beach.

The whole thing is, as the boys at Cahiers du Cinema used to say during the Golden Age of film criticism, "excitingly underexposed."

The cops don't arrest Wes, for no apparent reason. They also don't have southern accents, despite being in New Orleans. Nor do they have the New Orleans accent A.J. Liebling described in The Earl of Louisiana:

"There is a New Orleans city accent . . . associated with downtown New Orleans, particularly with the German and Irish Third Ward, that is hard to distinguish from the accent of Hoboken, Jersey City, and Astoria, Long Island, where the Al Smith inflection, extinct in Manhattan, has taken refuge. The reason, as you might expect, is that the same stocks that brought the accent to Manhattan imposed it on New Orleans."

No, these cops just sound like ordinary shlubs, and while this lack of verisimilitude would kill lesser films, "Night of Bloody Horror" survives, in part because of some excellent axe work, in part due to the psychedelic freakout scenes, and mostly because of the splendid bar scene featuring a band called "The Bored."

You have to rent this flick just to hear The Bored and witness the authentic bad Sixties dancing.

Two and a half breasts. One hand chopping. One axe in female chest. One death by long needle in confessional. Genuinely bad dancing. The excruciating music of The Bored. "Major Dad" before he gained 200 pounds and took acting lessons. Stuffed corpses. Gratuitous psychiatry. Gratuitous sideburns. Gratuitous Fu Manchu moustache on the drummer for the Bored. Fat psychiatrist in gaudy dressing gown. New Orleans cops with flat-as-a-crepe accents. Lame psychedelic special effects. Cinematographer with optic nerve damage. Short at 89 minutes.

Two and a half coils.

The Cinema - The Doll Squad Has Jiggle, Kung-Fu, but No Gazongas

As this blog ripens I will be adding brief reviews of largely-overlooked films - the sort of thing that used to be available only to people wearing raincoats, if you get my drift, but may now be obtained on DVD for viewing at home.

Which takes a lot of the fun out of the exploitation film experience, incidentally. These movies are really best viewed in a dingy theater with sticky floors, or at a drive-in. Alas, the post-modern world has no room for such old-fashioned venues.

The Doll Squad (1974) is a tame little flick from Ted V. Mikels, director of the immortal Astro-Zombies (1970). This has some of the same Magic-Marker-on-celluloid special effects, and a whole lot of jiggling (but, alas, bikini-clad) hooters, and one legitimate beast in the person of William Bagdad as "Joseph," who looks like a Cincinnati hot dog vendor on a Sterno binge.

A secret agent goes nuts, rents an island off Venezuela, and hatches a diabolical plot to release bubonic plague, carried by extra-smart rats, unless the world meets his demands. But since he only communicates his demands to one U.S. Senator and one spy agency type, via a static-y transmission to the TV set in the senator's office and by carrier pigeon, the world does not meet his demands.

Never mind. The computer says Sabrina Kincaid and the Doll Squad are the only ones who can stop the fiend.

There are a few lively moments as Sabrina flounces from a naugahyde booth in a steakhouse to a naugahyde booth in a strip joint, putting the squad together and foiling would-be killers, but after that we have endless running around in jumpsuits and destroying the World's Stupidest Army. And without redeeming nekkidness this is tedious.

Summary: Many breasts, two of them almost naked (damn pasties); many shapely behinds, all clad; one greasy treacherous junkie; one greasy treacherous weirdo; one extraordinarily inept assassin, who first gets the cigarette lighter/flame thrower in face treatment (while seated in a naugahyde booth) and later gets the knife in eye (in the parking lot); really bad kung fu; lame villain in tight pants. One and half coils, mostly for the villain's Tom Jones impersonation and regrettable habit of putting his Chelsea boots on the coffee table, and for William Bagdad's fine slinking around the amusement park.

The film was supposedly the inspiration for "Charlie's Angels." And why not?

Better bets from this director : Astro Zombies and The Corpse Grinders.